Uttarkashi: One more body of a mountaineer was retrieved from the site of an avalanche near the Draupadi ka Danda-2 peak in this Uttarakhand district on Saturday, despite bad weather conditions hampering the search efforts. With the recovery of the body, the death toll in the October 4 avalanche has gone up to 27, while two mountaineers are still missing, the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) said.
Twenty-nine members of a team from the NIM had gone missing after the avalanche hit them on their way back from their summit expedition, according to the institute. Meanwhile, seven more bodies retrieved earlier were brought from the base camp to Uttarkashi to be handed over to the families of the victims.
Four of the bodies were handed over to the victims’ kin in Uttarkashi, while the bodies of three victims from Assam, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh were sent to the Himalayan Hospital, Jolly Grant under police escort for embalming before they are sent to their respective destinations, Uttarkashi Disaster Management Officer Devendra Patwal said.
The families of the victims, who were trainee mountaineers, except the one from Uttar Pradesh had come to Uttarkashi to collect the bodies.
As the trainee mountaineer from Uttar Pradesh was also an NCC cadet, members of the NCC’s Uttarkashi unit accompanied the body to the Himalayan Hospital, Patwai said. Four bodies were brought down from the base camp on Friday.
The search efforts for the missing mountaineers were hampered by heavy snowfall at the avalanche-hit site. With the weather conditions obstructing the search efforts, the relatives of the missing mountaineers, who have come to Uttarkashi from different parts of the country, are getting impatient. —PTI